The Bitterest Pills: The Troubling Story of Antipsychotic Drugs

This book, written by a well-trained British psychiatrist,Joanna Moncrieff, tells the true story of how anti-psychotic drugs were first developed and named "anti-psychotic" in the first place. She goes on to develop an argument about the drug-centered model of psychopharmceuticals and the disease-centered model, which is the one prevalent today that claims psycho-active drugs treat real symptoms and illnesses by actual drug mechanisms. Moncrieff disputes this, shows that the research has never borne this out as fact, and claims that many drugs were developed with very little oversight or research at all, and much more marketing than anything at all.This is not to say that Moncrieff does not use anti-psychotic drugs in her practice. She says she does, when necessary. She is open-minded and doesn't want people with active psychosis to suffer. But she is dubious about the effects and the research and the longterm effects especially.This is an eye-opening book, especially for anyone who has never read this sort of argument before.I want to add that i have been diagnosed with schizophrenia for decades and have taken nearly every " anti-psychotic" drug on the market from massive "state hospital" doses of chlorpromazine and thioridazine (enough of the latter to induce chorioretinopathy later on) to weekly "depot" injections of fluphenazine, to clozapine, which induced terrible side effects including agranucytosis, and then to olanzapine and metabolic syndrome (though for years i tolerated it because i believed it to be a miracle drug...).No longer. I still take '2 weight neutral AP drugs, which i do not want to take but seem to need to avoid descending into a drug-'induced psychosis...so i take them every day but they do not keep me well enough to stay out of the hospital completely...so how well do any of the drugs work? Not well at all, if they do anything at all, which is dubious. My sense is that they induce just enough brain damage to force a person to keep taking them. That's all.

A very thorough and dispassionate look at the use and abuse of antipsychotics. The conclusion follows fairly from the data... antipsychotics are dangerous and should only be used as a last defense in the treatment of mental illness. One wonders how the "system" has been able to get away with this criminal behavior for so long. Money is indeed the root of all evil.

A must read book that tells the shocking truth about the so-called antipsychotics They are poor-performing drugs that act as nerve toxins that cause horrific, often permanent effects such as heart attack, diabetes, muscle spasms and brain damage.

Great information and great documentation.

Moncreiff is a relic from the heady days of Szasz and Laing. She denies the reality of "mental illness" which she places in scare quotes and considers only a "useful myth." Moncreiff denies the "medical" model of insanity, preferring her own "drug-centered" one as a rebuke of pharmacotherapy. She considers psychotropic agents to be either fancy placebos or dangerous causes of mental illness. Any smart person will note the oxymoron: drugs can't be BOTH evil (the cause of psychosis) and benign (sugar pills). Moncreiff is earnest, but has thrown her lot too much in with Gotzsche and others in the "antipsychiatry" camp. Her attacks on the efficacy, safety, and utility of drug therapy are silly; she simply denies the science showing effect sizes and remission rates and nitpicks at study design to undermine EBM. Like most of these popular science writers, Moncreiff is polemical and paranoid and not very helpful. Buyer beware.

I have taken antipsychotics continuously for 16 years, off and on for twenty years, and actually managed to take Zyprexa [Olanzapine] - also non-stop - for the life of its patent. IMHO this qualifies me to critique the thesis of her book (which I have just ordered) based solely on the Amazon book description. Here it is: the author's discussion is the correct one to listen to.In case not-reading might somehow disqualify me according to whatever guidelines there may be; let me be a little more thoughtful and use actual content from, presumably, Joanna Moncrieff. The title alone deserves praise. Need I get too personal? My only concern is [if] the writing veers off topic from pharmacological to pharmaceutical, given some ambiguous references of "Story." If so 'peneprime' remarks may need to revisit the promotional blurb.

Doctors need to know the effects of drugs they prescribe, people who take the drug need to know the effects of the drugs they take. Accurate information needs to be provided at a time when a distressed person is able to understand it, not when they are acutely distressed. Discussions about the effects of neuroleptic drugs need to occur in the wider community so that the pharmaceutical propaganda is not the only information that doctors and patients receive.

This book convincingly shows there is good reason to doubt accepted wisdom that antipsychotics (or neuroleptics) work in a disease centered way (like an antibiotic works to remove an infection). Instead antipsychotics are more like painkillers, they have drug-centered action, and they come with a very big cost especially long term - side effects, and diseases like diabetes for many. Most important though is that the majority of those on antipsychotics needn't be on them - they are only really useful for acute or very serious cases of psychosis, when the benefits may occasionally outweigh the risks and costs, if prescribed cautiously.Of particular interest is the chapter on early intervention in psychosis services - what governments have spent millions of dollars on, with the mistaken belief investing in early intervention in psychosis will save costs later on.Policy makers need to really need to read this book, so as to invest money in mental health services more wisely. It is indeed troubling how the predominant approach to mental health issues may be making things worse both for the patient and the psychiatry profession.

Excellent book it is good to hear something other than what the shrinks want u to hear. Hopefully the system will one day be seriously review.

This is a thorough and thoughtful book which presents a careful analysis and criticism of psychiatric prescribing and the influence of the drug industry.That said, I'm not sure that what she says here adds significantly to information given elsewhere. If you've read, for example, Richard Bentall's books (Doctoring the MInd and Madness explained) plus her excellent "Straight-talking Introduction to Psychiatric Drugs" this book will not add a great deal.It also leaves the patient and their family wondering what to do about this situation. We have this knowledge, yes, but how can it help us and what can we do instead? At the end of the book I'm armed with information on what NOT to do plus perhaps some ideas for more searching questions for mental health practitioners. I needed to know what to do instead of relying on antipsychotics.

Well-written and thoroughly researched, this book tells the bizarre tale of how mainstream psychiatry persauded itself it had discovered specific treatments for schizophrenia and psychosis, but it could only do this by ignoring the fact that these drugs are highly toxic.Psychiatrists are so desparate to believe that antipsychotics are safe and effective they ignore or discount the evidence to the contrary. 'The Bitterest Pills' is above all a book of evidence. There is no research evidence that antipsychotics improve the outcome in the long-term and plenty of evidence that suggests they make it worse.I know this is hard to believe. Would all those clever doctors mislead us all? Don't take my word for it: read this book and make up your own mind.In Dr Moncrief's own words: "It is important to state straight away that I am a practicing psychiatrist, and that I believe that antipsychotics have a role in helping to suppress the manifestations of severe mental disturbance. I have seen people who are locked into an overwhelming psychotic state, which can sometimes be sufficiently suppressed by antipsychotics of one sort or another that they are able to regain some contact with the outside world again. This suppression comes at a price, however, as other thoughts and emotions are also slowed and numbed, but for some people this price is worth paying, at least initially. The cost-benefit analysis of long-term treatment, especially in people who have recovered from their acute episode, is more difficult to fathom... I hope this book will enable readers to re-evaluate the story of antipsychotic drugs as it is usually told, and appreciate the many dangers they represent, as well as the opportunities they provide some people in the grips of a severe mental disorder. It is intended to throw a sceptical light on the acres of research literature and marketing material that present these drugs as a practically untarnished boon to humankind, but also to show, through first-hand accounts, how the drugs might be distinctively helpful in some situations. It should also raise questions about the consequences of long-term treatment, and why, six decades after their introduction, we still cannot be sure if antipsychotics help or harm people who take them for long periods of time."

As a carer for someone with depression with psychotic symptoms, i saw first hand that low doses of antipsychotic can bring on parkinsonism. I am spreading the word, that Peter C Gotzsche said in his book, Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime, antipsychotics should be used sparingly if at all, are dangerous and cause severe and permanent brain damage.The side affects can be horrendous. Thank God researchers are now looking at the Gut-Brain connection in relation to mental illness.